And so, the end is near… We boarded the train for our final day and a jaunt across the mongolian border into china. It was a pretty uneventful journey, well aside from getting locked in a carriage with some Dutch folks when they stopped for a couple of hours to change the wheels. Luckily, they were a friendly bunch who fed me vodka and escorted me safely back to my room! Unfortunately Diana and I had to share our room for the final journey, but as it turned out it was a couple (Lucile and Luke) from the Avenues in Gateshead. It was nice to hear a Geordie accent.
We reached Beijing and hell was it smoggy. You can understand why many people walk around with their face masks on. Some of the group decided to spend the evening in ‘Alice’s Teahouse’ in a hutong not far from out hotel and what a treat we had in store. Her husband, Charlie the chef, kept us the food coming; it was divine.
And afterwards Alice shared with us some of the rituals surrounding tea ceremony’s and we got to sample lots of tasty tea.
The following day was full on; temples, Tianamen Square and the Great Wall. I’ll just add a couple of pix as I’ll be returning to them when I return to China in a couple of weeks time (there’s no escaping my history lessons!)
And so onto to the last supper with my group. Appropriately, we went out for dinner to a Chinese restaurant – well, when in China! The highlight of the evening was when the Canadian’s ordered bull frogs and the waitress brought them out to check if they fresh were fresh enough! The shrieks could have been heard down in Hongkong!
And so we all said goodbye 😦
Luckily, I had one more day in Beijing and Diana was staying on too so we checked into a hostel and enjoyed another day exploring Beijing.